


C’est La Vie, C’est La Mort

by OurLadyofPerpetualWallflowers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Making Out, trapped in the upside down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 01:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurLadyofPerpetualWallflowers/pseuds/OurLadyofPerpetualWallflowers
Summary: Steve says he’s never thought about leaving Hawkins right as Billy sucks a deep purple bruise on his neck, inches above where his collar would normally lie. The air is stiflingly close around them, muggy and warm in a way Billy didn’t quite expect, like the very ground is breathing.





	C’est La Vie, C’est La Mort

**Author's Note:**

> Not a prompt fill but I wanted to celebrate anyway. 
> 
> Title from the Civil Wars song

Steve says he’s never thought about leaving Hawkins right as Billy sucks a deep purple bruise on his neck, inches above where his collar would normally lie. The air is stiflingly close around them, muggy and warm in a way Billy didn’t quite expect, like the very ground is breathing. Billy hums around a mouthful of flesh, pulls off and examines his work before replying.

“You thinking about it now?”

Steve sighs, thumps his head against the windshield where he’s sprawled over the hood of the car like an offering, Billy crouched over him like he’s a feast. “Maybe.”

Fingers skate up Billy’s ribs and blunt nails rake back down. Brown eyes stare upwards. “Things might be easier somewhere else.” Billy snorts and rests his weight on top of Steve, thighs spread to straddle his waist. 

“Sweetheart, if you were looking for something easy, you should have stayed the hell away from me.” He grins and Steve rolls his eyes even as he smiles back, puts his hands on Billy with purpose, rocks his hips up in a slow grind. 

“I don’t know, you seem pretty easy to me.”

As if to prove it, Billy lets his knees slide wider, opens himself up more for whatever Steve feels like doing. Their shirts are long gone, used to bandage up their cuts and scrapes from the rough trip down here, so there’s just the press of skin on skin, a rare comfort. 

He thinks it’s been a week. It’s hard to tell.

Steve’s hands spread wide over his back and press down hard to feel the rise and fall of Billy’s breathing, to know that he’s still there. Steve is obsessive about that. Billy is too, now that he’s seen what lurks down here.

The Upside Down.

It all happened so fast. Billy was tailing Max to meet her little dork friends after she snuck out and when she ran into the woods like she had a mission, he’d followed behind, a feeling in his gut telling him that something was wrong.

The sight of a tree split by a pulsing, living wound was very, very wrong indeed. He thinks he grabbed her by her hair, pulled her away from the rip in the world. Remembers shoving her and Sinclair and another boy he’d never seen behind him, digging his heels into the soft earth to hold them back. Billy had been furious at the strength it took, at the way they kept struggling to get away, to get closer to that thing, heedless of his bruising grip or his screaming or anything but getting to the rend in the tree.

And then he’d seen it, the figure sprawled on the ground, hands loosely grasping a baseball bat, dazed brown eyes catching his as thick vines wrapped around him and began pulling him into the tree.

_Harrington._

Everything after that is chaos. And here they are.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that they’re here together. They always seem to wind up together for some reason. Maybe it’s the way Billy stares. The way Steve stares back. The number of times they meet and the world disappears around them; at parties, on the weekends, in the night.

This thing between this is new but it feels like they’ve been circling it forever, ever since they met, since Billy first heard the name King Steve, since Steve first saw a blue Camaro blaring rock music. Nothing about what’s between them has ever been subtle. 

Billy sinks his teeth into the curve of Steve’s shoulder and rides the tremor that shakes his frame, relishes the bite of nails on his back. 

“Fuck! You’re gonna break skin.” Steve pants and pulls back a bit. They have to be so careful about blood down here. Have to check themselves constantly for any cuts or scrapes, bandage them up tight, all so they don’t attract the attention of the monsters that prowl the streets.

As if summoned, a faint growl comes from the road and Steve pauses just a moment, a little hitch in the slide of his palms on Billy’s skin, but something about it pisses him off and he shoves himself up and off the car clumsily, raking his good hand through his hair, the other hanging stiffly by his side.

“Yeah well I’m not easy, nothing about this fucking place is easy.” He glares at the opening in the sky that they came tumbling through not too long ago. The one that leads right back to the real world, winking at them from the roof of the mall. The one Steve could climb out of as easy as anything if he wanted. If he wasn’t so hellbent on taking Billy with him. “This is so stupid, Harrington, just...just get the hell out of here.”

Steve sits up, another sigh on his lips. They’ve had this conversation twice before. Billy wants to have it again. 

“Not going anywhere.” Steve skips to the punchline and Billy gets angrier, like Steve’s trying to ignore all the ways they could horribly die down here.

Maybe Billy worries too. 

Not just about monsters in the dark but about what might happen if they both do get out of here. What Steve will say about this thing between them once Billy isn’t the only other living soul in town. Once he might have been worried about his father. About the people in Hawkins. But not anymore.

Billy’s seen what that brings, back home. He used to have nightmares about it. But now he’s seen living breathing nightmares, seen things too monstrous to comprehend without experiencing it. He can imagine what those creatures will do to him once they catch him. He can’t watch that happen to Steve.

Breaking him out of his thoughts, Steve snags his belt loop, reels him in. “How many times we have to go through this? Once your shoulder is good enough to climb, we’re going through that rift together. Until then...I’m not going anywhere without you.” He looks at Billy steadily and waits him out. Billy just shakes his head and looks down at their bodies pressed against each other. He hates this conversation as much as a part of him loves it. And suddenly he’s so tired. 

Tired of fighting everything and everyone, tired of monsters and demons, tired of pretending he wasn’t ass over teakettle for Steve them moment he saw him. He wants this, him, everything, always.

“We’re gonna die like this, you know.” He rests his forehead against Steve’s, breathes his air.

“What, arguing? Yeah, probably.”

“No.” Billy ignores the joke, suddenly serious and needing to have Steve be serious too. “Like this. Same air in our lungs, looking into each other’s eyes,” He swallows and nudges the tip of Steve’s nose with his own. “Just us.”

Steve smiles gently and nudges him back. 

“Yeah, we are. Old and grey and arguing over something we can’t remember.” Billy breathes in the words and holds them in his lungs, wills them to be true. Another growl echoes off the crumbling buildings, closer this time, but they ignore it. 

It’ll take at least a month more for his shoulder to heal. A month of hiding from nightmares and trying not to bleed. Of eating half-rotten fruit and drinking metallic water, of sleeping in shifts in broken-down cars. Of kissing Steve Harrington in an eternal twilight.

“I wanna die old with you.” 

Steve pulls him impossibly closer, eyes soft and smile bright. 

“What a way to go.”


End file.
